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Climate Change

Climate Change

Addressing climate change can be an overwhelming and daunting task, but when all individuals in a community engage, prepare, and collaborate on effective climate change strategies, then partnerships and solutions arise. Evaluating baseline opinions, values, core beliefs, and identities of a community’s diverse population will allow environmental health professionals to better understand how and where behavior change can produce maximum results. Promoting long-term planning for climate change is important. Communities must create and be examples of more efficient and sustainable lifestyles, such as using active and mass transportation, reducing waste, and conserving energy and water.

NEHA Climate Change Policy Statement

NEHA's Board of Directors adopted NEHA's Climate Change Policy Statement written by NEHA's Climate Change Committee. Climate change is affecting environmental health—the quality of air, food, and water in the communities where we live, work, and play (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). NEHA recognizes climate change as a world-wide environmental health problem that has health and safety impacts to individuals and communities. Environmental health professionals improve and protect the public’s health and create and sustain healthy communities. It is NEHA’s responsibility to support the capacity of environmental health professionals to address the health impacts of climate change with risk assessment, adaptation, and mitigation planning.

NEHA and ecoAmerica’s Climate for Health Partnership

NEHA is excited to announce its new partnership with ecoAmerica’sClimate for Health program. Please see the new ecoAmerica resources and other recent climate reports. Together, NEHA and Climate for Health are building visible national leadership on climate solutions and institutionalizing climate action as a health imperative; developing and supporting climate literate environmental health professionals that can lead on climate; engaging all leadership, members, and stakeholders; and building collective support and action for climate solutions within the NEHA community and across the health sector.

ecoAmerica’s Climate for Health program partners with America’s leading health associations and institutions to make climate change a top national health priority. Click here for Climate for Health resources and tools.

Please see NEHA's Climate Metrics Survey results report (2017) in partnership with ecoAmerica and Climate for Health. NEHA invited its members to participate in an online survey to determine members’ attitudes and behaviors on climate change. This survey was part of a national survey sponsored by ecoAmerica and Climate for Health. The report highlights key NEHA member results and comparisons to a representative national sample of U.S. adults, and a sample of NEHA members in 2016.

NEHA and ecoAmerica hosted a webinar to preview two climate and health presentations at NEHA's AEC & Exhibition: Climate for Health Ambassadors Training and the latest NEHA Climate Metrics Survey results. This is an opportunity to get a sneak-peek before the AEC to learn more about these presentations. The Climate for Health Ambassadors orientation provides an overview of the full training program’s content, including a Q&A section. Content includes Climate 101, Climate Impacts on Health, Climate Solutions and Health Benefits, and Communicating on Climate and Health. Please see the Climate for Health Ambassadors Training promotion for more information. Please also see the accompanying webinar slides.

The Climate Science Special Report, released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, describes current trends in the climate globally and for the U.S., as well as projects trends in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, and Arctic Sea ice for the remainder of this century.

The Lancet Countdown’s 2017 report tracks 40 indicators across five areas, arriving at three key conclusions: 1) the human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible; 2) the delayed response to climate change over the past 25 years has jeopardized human life and livelihoods; and 3) the past five years have seen an accelerated response.